“Want to come in?”
I nodded, shy, as though I hadn’t yelled at this boy multiple times. Different, I supposed, to be on his home turf after deciding to play nice.
“So what’s the plan, Abigail Schoenberg?” he asked as we stepped into the airy foyer of the mansion. I hadn’t been in the entryway before, and I paused to take in the high ceilings and massive staircase. “Where do you want to start your tour?”
I couldn’t get over the unease this house wrought in me. “How about outside?”
We cut through the living room where I’d served champagne a few weeks ago, and out the French doors into the lawn. It was no less impressive sans white tents and sound systems than it had been with them; better, perhaps, with just the undulating roll of green, the thick gardens, and the ocean on the horizon. “Can we see the rose gardens? And the gazebo?” At his sharp glance, I added, “I read about them in the letters.”
“Seriously?”
“You can read them, you know.”
“Why, when you’re already telling me the interesting parts?”
I let out a half laugh. “Notallthe interesting parts.”
“What do you mean?”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head, my cheeks warming.
His brows rose up. “What?”
“Nothing.” One of the lines from the letters formed, unbidden, in my mind.I wish I could see you surrounded by roses, naked and drenched in moonlight.
Hard pass on sharing. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Flowers edged the lawn: romantic, soft-looking pinks against the dark green foliage; summer lilacs of all colors, vibrant magenta and pure white and gentle purple. A monarch butterfly landed on a plant with clustered pink-purple stars. “They like milkweed,” Noah said. “The monarch population’s declining like crazy, so if you want to help, plant milkweed.”
I glanced at him, impressed but unwilling to let him know it. “Pro tips from Noah.”
“Someone’s got to save the butterflies.”
“I take it your secret passion is entomology, not economics?”
He shot me a wry glance and led me through an arch in the dense privet hedge. We entered a winding maze of trees and bushes, covering the expanse from the lawn to the dunes. The trees here were spindly, salt-warped things, with peeling bark and thin, twisted trunks. Their needles looked hard and sharp, as likely to prick blood as Sleeping Beauty’s spindle. “What are these?”
“Junipers. Their berries are used to make gin.”
“And what about those?” I nodded at orange-red blooms at the base of the trees.
“Don’t you know, bookstore girl?” He plucked one and tucked it in my hair, and I stilled, utterly shocked. I also felt bizarrely afraid of startling him away, because it turned out IlikedNoah Barbaneltouching my hair, even if he was teasing me, throwing me off my guard because he could. But maybe he wasn’t. I’d never seen him so at ease. “They’re poppies.”
Poppies, a field of which lured Dorothy to sleep.
Once more I wondered if I’d wandered off the path, into Oz or Narnia or some strange world where the rules weren’t mine and I didn’t know when I broke them. I swallowed and lifted my chin, hoping to brazen through. “No roses, though.”
Noah smiled and led me deeper into the gardens, down a path of hedges, the ocean peeking in and out of sight. Flagstones occasionally dotted the path, more a suggestion than a demarcation. His voice floated back toward me. “Botany.”
I hurried after him. “What?”
He didn’t answer.
It clicked. “You’d study botany instead of business? Why?”
He looked back. “I want to work on preserving biodiversity. If we can understand why species are going extinct, we can try to prevent it.”
I nodded. “Thus, the monarchs.”
